Hitachi Touro Mobile Pro 500 GB USB 3.0 7200 RPM Portable External Hard Drive (0S03105) [Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging]
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- Sleek mobile design is perfect for the style-conscious consumer.
- Two levels of protection, with preloaded local and cloud backup software, help keep your content safe.
- Cloud backup enables anywhere, anytime remote access.
- Upgrade to paid account and receive 250 GB of cloud storage along with iPhone and iPad mobile digital device apps.
- USB 3.0 interface delivers fast transfer speeds.
The sleek, Touro Mobile Pro portable drive provides superb ease of use, two levels of protection and 3 GB of cloud storage. Enjoy two levels of data protection, with both local and cloud backup, to keep your photos, movies, music and documents not only safe but available anytime, anywhere, from any smartphone or computer web browser. You can even share your online content with others by simply sending a web link. Includes fast USB 3.0 interface. Need more online storage? Upgrade to a paid account and receive 250 GB of cloud storage along with iPhone and iPad mobile digital device apps.
Hitachi Hard Drive
Hitachi Touro Mobile Pro 500 GB USB 3.0 7200 RPM Portable External Hard Drive (0S03105) [Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging]
List Price: $ 89.99
Price:
Buy it for the hardware, NOT for the software…,
Bottom line: good hardware bundled with one of the lamest vendor-supplied backup utility programs I’ve seen (and the bar is set low for this category of software!)
So: *after* uninstalling the non-functional backup software from my computer and deleting those files from the otherwise empty hard drive, I tested the hardware. Window 7 recognized it immediately, and using my existing non-Hitachi backup software, it was reading and writing data without problems right away.
PROS:
-nice sleek appearance.
-USB bus powered, so no external power adapter or cord.
-small form factor; slightly larger and thicker than a smart phone.
-Quiet operation.
CONS:
-Bundled backup software didn’t work, and is equally dedicated to to selling Hitachi cloud storage services as it is to backing up your data. Excruciating details are addressed separately below.
After a short period of ownership, I can’t address the long term reliability, but Hitachi drives enjoy a good reputation. This one has a two-year warranty, which is hard to find in these days when the industry standard is one year.
Now, about that software, which is flawed enough to cost this drive a star…mostly for the hubris of Hitachi in considering this anything other than a beta release:
Hitachi’s backup utility (“Hitachi Backup”…the boys in marketing didn’t waste much creative juice thinking of this name) was included on this drive. Many external hard drive vendors do the same thing; I haven’t found one worth keeping yet, and Hitachi has not changed my mind with theirs. Even worse than offering limited user options (“Automatic” and “Scheduled”…with the latter being selectable only in 15 minute increments, and no apparent manual/on-demand option) are these other two glaring faults:
(1) after setting a backup time under the “Scheduled” option, the user interface backup status indicator switched from “ON” to “OFF”…and would not switch back. And it most certainly did NOT start copying any files when the designated time arrived. This was accompanied by a yellow warning sign indicating that backup was disabled. In the words of Tina Fey on “30 Rock”: “what the what?” Apparently the software also has a “restore” function as an adjunct to “backup”…but of course, I couldn’t try it without backed up data.
-half of the backup user interface is devoted to upselling Hitachi cloud storage services. You get 3GB at no charge by registering; after that, you can buy upgrades at $49/year for 250GB. I didn’t register to test this, but hope it works better than the local backup utility. You can register a domain name from many web hosts and get unlimited storage (or nearly so, depending on their terms of service) for about the same price. It’s not a competitive price, and I’m not sure it would work given the issues with the software managing a local backup.
Do yourself a favor: delete these files from the drive the first time you connect it, and stick with your current back-up method (or use the one bundled with your operating system…or just do a copy/paste when you get paranoid about data loss…any of these approaches will work better than this software).
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|Sleek and Shiny,
Since I’m a Mac user, I really don’t need the back up program offered on the drive, but I tested it just to be sure it works.
The back up software is offered on the drive for both Macs and PCs. First I downloaded it to my Mac and found installation to be quite easy. I was hoping to then use it only as an external hard drive to save only those files that I wanted to move to the drive; however, that is forbidden. I tried to delete the programs, but that was also forbidden. Next I downloaded the program to my netbook. Again, installation was simple but the only option is to back up specific files at predetermined times.
Since the Time Machine back up on my Mac works well for me already, I again attached the drive to my Mac and went through disk utility to turn the Hitachi into an external hard drive. Now it functions perfectly and is quite fast.
If I used my Netbook more often, I would probably use the software program on the Hitachi to do complete back ups since it’s a very simple program that can be programmed to meet anyone’s needs.
One big positive is that this requires only one USB cable — some require two, and that can tie up both USB ports and can be a pain when the ports are on opposite sides of the computer.
By the way, if this was “frustration-free packaging,” I must have a very short fuse, since this was difficult to open. The molded plastic wrapper is tight and it’s difficult to get scissors between the package and the drive without damaging the cable or scratching the drive. I’m getting frustrated just thinking about it.
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|Stick to Seagate or Western Digital,
I bought this drive due to its mobility and being that it was a 7200 RPM
external hard drive. My experience was good until I started receiving
errors when attempting to open files on the drive after having this
drive for only six months. I used chkdsk and Seagate’s
Drive tool to attempt to fix the errors and attempt to retrieve my files.
However, they are gone. My family pics and work files are gone.
To make matters worse, I have to pay to ship my drive back to Hitachi
in order for them to honor my open RMA. To make matters even worse, they will possibly
ship a “refurbished” product back to me. I will never buy a Hitachi product again.
Next time, I will pay the extra $20 – $30 for either a Seagate or Western Digital.
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